So Much More
by rebecca-in-blue
Summary: "She had only won a battle during the thunderstorm. She hadn't won the war." My take on what if the von Trapp kids hadn't warmed up to Maria quite so quickly.
1. Prologue

Is it just me, or are the von Trapp children a little neglected in SoM fanfiction? I see so many stories about Maria and Georg (and I'm not complaining, because most of them are really good!) but comparatively few about the kids. So, I decided to write one. This story will mostly take place while the Captain was away in Vienna. For understandable plot purposes, the movie had to make the kids warm up to Maria pretty quickly. But in this story, I decided to have her work a little harder to get their defenses down – and after going through so many governesses, I think it's realistic than they _would_ have been more guarded with her than they were. I hope you'll enjoy. I'm hoping to make this pretty long and really spend some time with these kids.

For my own reference: 106th fanfiction, 3rd story for _The Sound of Music._

* * *

 **Prologue**

 _"I shall tell Captain von Trapp to expect you tomorrow."_

That night, in her little room in the Nonnberg Abbey, Maria lay awake for a long time. Her narrow bed and thin mattress weren't very comfortable – luxuries of any kind were forbidden in the convent – but that wasn't the reason why she couldn't sleep. Her mind was much too busy to feel tired, busy wondering and worrying what the von Trapp family might be like. That evening, she had packed her few worldly possessions into her old carpet bag and secured her guitar safely into its case. They were waiting by the door of her room now, with her straw hat sitting on top, all ready to leave tomorrow morning.

 _Tomorrow morning!_ It felt much too soon and an eternity away, all at the same time. Maria tossed and turned, and stared at the moonlit shadows on the ceiling, and fretted. What she'd told the Reverend Mother was true: she _was_ very fond of children. As a teenager, she earned a little pocket money for herself looking after younger children in her neighborhood, and she'd always enjoyed it... but that was so long ago, and she had serious doubts about her ability to manage _seven_ children at once. Oh, what she would've given to know more about the children who would be her charges – How many were boys, and how many girls? How old were they? What were they like? – but the Reverend Mother could tell her only the barest details.

She had said that the children's mother had died several years ago, so that meant that the littlest child had to be at least _several_ years old – five or six, perhaps, which would mean that the oldest one was likely an early teenager, at least. Oh, teenagers could be such moody, surly things. Maria cringed at the thought of being a governess to even one, and depending on how spaced out the children were, she could very well have two or more on her hands. Why, she barely felt older than a teenager herself! How would she ever be able to enforce any discipline?

Maria sighed, kicked her covers off restlessly, and got up out of bed. She crossed her room to the tiny window in the wall and peered sternly at her reflection. She could only see her reflection in the window pane anymore, for no mirrors were allowed in the abbey. _They lead to vanity, and vanity is a sin_ , Sister Berthe had explained.

"Tomorrow's an important day," Maria said firmly to her reflection. "You must have a proper night's sleep."

She supposed that if she were a _proper_ postulante, she would soothe her worried mind by opening up her Bible and reading some pretty verses. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't seem to act like a proper postulante at all, and so instead of reaching for her Bible, Maria opened up her guitar case.

She didn't play a full song; she only strummed some simple chords and hummed along. It was so reassuring to Maria to know that she'd at least have her guitar with her when she set out for the von Trapps' tomorrow morning. It felt just like bringing along an old friend, someone who would be on her side and help her win over those children. There had to be at least _one_ among the seven who loved music and singing.

Playing the guitar relaxed her, as it always did, and as she played, Maria's mind wandered away from the children and settled on their father. A retired sea captain! It sounded so exciting. Maria had never known a sea captain before. She pictured him looking like a sailor, with a warm, laughing face. Of course, she'd never known any sailors, either – Salzburg was so very far from the sea – but sailors in books were always such jolly characters, tanned and brawny and full of jokes.

Maria played a while longer, and her mental image of the Captain grew sharper. She saw a cheerful little house crawling with children, all loudly playing and making messes. She imagined a handsome, hapless sailor in the middle of it, perhaps holding the littlest one on his hip, a loving father but overwhelmed with trying to manage so many children on his own.

The sound of music did the trick, as it always did, and when Maria tucked her guitar back into its case, she felt better about everything. She slipped back into her bed and fell asleep easily.

* * *

Her fantasies about life with the von Trapps had seemed so pleasant in her dark, moonlit room, but they came toppling down – one by one, like domino pieces – in the harsh sunlight of the next day. The first one to crumble was her image of the cheerful little house. She'd even pictured a garden in the front yard of it, with flowers and vegetables growing haphazardly together.

Her first glimpse of the von Trapp mansion through the front gates stopped her dead in her tracks. Maria didn't know if she'd ever seen a house so huge, and she'd certainly never set foot in one! The Reverend Mother hadn't mentioned that this family was filthy rich. For several seconds, she could just stand there and gape, her mouth hanging open, fighting the urge to turn and run back straight to the abbey, as all her confidence drained out of her. She only collected herself when she realized that one of the children could be watching her right _now_ , peeking out from the curtains and snickering at the new governess.

All of her fantasies went crashing down that day, but none of them crashed as hard as her image of Captain von Trapp as a jolly sailor. That one positively crashed and _burned_. She had imagined him smiling, tan and brawny, and when she first saw him in person, so stern and sharply-dressed, she had never felt more foolish or naive. Of course, it didn't help that the first time they saw each other, he found her pretending to dance in his off-limits ballroom, like some stupid lovestruck teenager.

The _one_ part of her fantasies that had come true – the _only_ thing that she'd gotten right – was that the Captain was handsome. No, he looked nothing like she'd imagined him, but still, in his own severe way, he was handsome. She realized that as she followed Frau Schmidt upstairs to her room, after she'd gotten over the shock of finding a toad in her pocket, an unwelcome present from the seven children who were now her charges. Until _September_.

The large, gold-framed mirror on the landing of the stairs was another shock. Maria had not seen herself in a mirror in a long time, and she startled a bit, caught off-guard by her own reflection. The shock of the frog was still obvious on her face, and she hated the overwhelmed look in her eyes. Had she looked like this in front of the Captain and his children? So obviously defeated? Maria paused in front of the mirror and took a deep breath. She wasn't beaten, not yet, and she refused to look it. She squared her shoulders and narrowed her eyes until she was satisfied with her reflection again, and repeated the words that she'd sung to herself on her journey here from the abbey.

 _Besides what you see, I have confidence in me_.


	2. Eavesdropping

Many thanks to those of you who have reviewed or followed this story. The plot really gets underway in this chapter. There's also a little reference in here that I'm curious to see if anyone will catch.

* * *

 **Chapter 1  
Eavesdropping  
**

 _"You must never come to dinner on time."_

Maria first noticed it during dinner, on her first night at the von Trapp house. She had just laid as much guilt as she could on the children for the frog in her pocket, and then she sat back and waited for it to sink in. Marta was the first one to break, wiping her eyes and sniffling piteously over her plate. Captain von Trapp sighed with obvious annoyance and asked, "What _is_ the matter, Marta?"

But Maria paid closer attention to Liesl's reaction. Liesl noticed her sister's tears before their father did. As soon as Marta started sniffling, Liesl spotted eating and stared across the table at her, her face full of the concern that the Captain's lacked. It seemed obvious to Maria that she wanted to comfort Marta, but not in front of their father.

The other children broke down in tears soon after Marta did. It was like watching dominoes topple over, one after the other. Maria continued eating dinner and pretended not to notice, but she watched them closely out of the corner of her eye. She had suspected before she'd even arrived here that these children were troublemakers of some sort – why else would the Captain have such a difficult time retaining a governess, and why else would the Reverend Mother evade the question? – but now, she felt almost certain that there was much more to them than simply causing trouble. She felt certain that there was much more to them than met the eye.

* * *

Her suspicions were confirmed later that same night, after the thunderstorm. After the Captain burst into her room, ordered the children back to bed, and brushed off her requests for new sewing material, Maria was in her room, pacing the floor and fuming at that man – _so stubborn, so impossible_ – when suddenly, the most marvelous idea came to her. " _There'll be new drapes for the windows_ ," Frau Schmidt had said. If there were to be new ones, then she could make playclothes for the children out of these curtains!

Maria immediately unfastened the curtains from their rods, pulled them down, and spread them flat across the floor and the bed. She couldn't do much without a sewing machine and specific measurements of the children, but she did have her measuring tape and scissors, and so she made some basic cuts and measurements, singing softly to herself as she worked, for singing had always made even the hardest work easier for her. _A song will move the job along,_ her grandmother used to say when she was a little girl.

"With each step I am more certain, everything will turn out fine." The upholstery of the curtains was coarser than proper fabric, but Maria felt confident that she could manage sewing it. Excited and energized by the idea, she would've kept working late into the night, had she not been distracted by faint noises of someone moving about.

Maria opened the door of her room and peered up and down the hall. As the governess, she had been given a room quite near the nursery and the children's bedrooms; looking down the hall now, she could see a light on beneath the closed door of the nursery, occasionally interspersed with shadows. But the children should all be asleep by now; what were they doing up in the nursery?

She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but as she approached the nursery door, she heard her own name, and it froze her. They were talking about _her_!

"Well, _I_ don't care if we let Maria stay," Friedrich was saying, in the same trying-to-convince himself voice that he had used for _We just wanted to make sure that_ you _weren't scared_. "I mean, the younger ones did seem to like her... but _I_ don't care either way."

"I just don't know," Liesl answered. Her words were slower and more thoughtful, and as she went on, Maria could hear her real confusion over what to do. "Maria seems so... different, doesn't she? She doesn't seem like the others. She let us all come into her room, and she sang us that song, but..." Liesl fell silent and sighed, obviously conflicted.

Maria held her breath and leaned in towards the closed nursery door. _But what?_

"But you remember what happened the _last_ time we didn't try getting rid of a governess?" Liesl asked. "You remember what happened the _last_ time we decided to let one stay?"

 _What happened?_ Maria wanted to know so badly that she had to press one hand over her mouth to keep from asking out loud. Had the children had a bad experience with one of their previous governesses? Was that when they had started playing their awful tricks? She was dying to find out, but she didn't, for Friedrich never answered his sister's questions. But it was clear that whatever had happened, it hadn't been good, and they both remembered it very well.

"Well, we'll discuss what to do about Maria at the next meeting," Liesl said briskly, in a changing-the-subject tone, and this made Maria curious, too. _Meeting? What meeting?_ But before she could wonder about it, Liesl went on. "I wonder why Gretl went to her room during the thunderstorm. She and Marta should've already been asleep by the time it started getting loud."

"Well, maybe it woke them," Friedrich suggested.

"Or maybe they were still awake. Brigitta better not having been reading to them from those ghost stories again. I told her I would take those books away if she didn't stop that. Whose turn was it to put them to bed tonight?"

"Um, Louisa's, I think. I meant to check and make sure they were asleep, but I forgot. I had to spend the evening dealing with Kurt and his stomach. Did you know he's taken to sneaking snacks out of the kitchen and hiding them under his bed? I told him if he kept it up, our room would be crawling with bugs soon."

"Hmm... did that get him to stop?"

"Well, ah, no," Friedrich admitted, a little guiltily. "I don't actually want him to _stop_. I just want him to cut back, at least until the winter." There was a pause, and Liesl must have glared at him, because he added defensively, "Well, I _like_ having snacks in our room. And besides, we won't have to worry about bugs in the winter – the cold kills them all off."

Liesl and Friedrich said goodnight to each other and went to bed soon after that, but Maria stayed there in the dark, empty hallway for some time, thinking. She thought about the horrid brats who put a toad in her pocket and a pinecone on her chair. She thought about the affection-starved children who'd been frightened by a thunderstorm and comforted by her singing. And she thought about the conversation that she'd just overheard. Yes, there was so much more to these children than she'd first realized. They could be awful, they be dear, and they could be surprisingly mature, too. Most older siblings didn't put the younger ones to bed, or check on them while they slept, or make sure that they kept their rooms clean. It sounded as if Liesl and Friedrich acted more like parents than like a big sister and brother, and Maria got the impression that this had been the case for some time.

Maria returned to her room and began to fold up the curtains that she'd left spread across her bed. Tomorrow morning, after their father left for Vienna, she would tell the children her plan of making playclothes for them out of the old curtains. Her earlier nervousness wasn't completely gone; after all, she'd just overheard Liesl and Friedrich discussing the the idea of still getting rid of her, and neither one of them had actually decided against it. Maria was certain that the children could all go back to their horrid behavior as easily as flipping a light switch. She had only won a battle by singing to them during the thunderstorm. She hadn't won the war.

But still, she went to bed with a renewed confidence beating excitedly in her chest. There was so much more to learn about these children, so much more than met the eye. She couldn't wait to see what she would discover about them next.


	3. Breakfast

I'm very grateful to gothicbutterly95, jennifer-willing, and guests for taking the time to review this story. I think most readers spotted the _Mary Poppins_ reference in the last chapter, and there's a similar one here. I'm hoping to pepper this story with as many as I can, because _Mary Poppins_ is one of the few movies I love even more than _The Sound of Music_. :)

My image for this story has been changed to one of Liesl and Gretl, that I found in an obituary for Charmian Carr, who passed away while I was writing this chapter. She will always be "Sixteen Going on Seventeen" to SoM fans. Rest in peace.

* * *

 **Chapter 2**  
 **Breakfast**

The next day, Maria's first full day at the von Trapp mansion, the Captain left for Vienna. He left early in the morning, before breakfast, and he didn't hug or kiss any of his children goodbye, not even the littlest ones. He barely even said goodbye to them at all. He only said in that stern voice, "If I have to cut my trip short because I get another telegram that you've all been misbehaving again, then I won't bring Uncle Max back with me."

Maria stood by and listened and fumed silently. Why, it was as plain as day that his children acted so horribly because they were tired of him always going away, because they knew that bad behavior would bring him home. Why couldn't the Captain _see_ that? What in heaven's name was _wrong_ with the man? Maria wanted to throttle him so badly that she had to clench her fists to keep from doing it.

She was glaring daggers at the Captain, but her gaze was distracted when she noticed a little flicker of movement among the children. As their father droned on, giving more orders, Brigitta glanced over at Liesl and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Liesl in turn caught Friedrich's gaze and held it for a moment, as if they were debating something, and then Friedrich looked quickly at Brigitta and gave a barely-discernible nod.

It went on and on like that between the seven of them, a series of tiny motions too fast and subtle for the Captain to notice, and it dawned on Maria that they were _talking_. Right under their father's nose, they were all having a conversation. About him? About her? She couldn't tell, but whatever it was, it was as clear to these children as if they were speaking out loud with words. Maria supposed that they'd developed this language over the years to be able to talk amongst themselves without their father or governesses knowing.

She was so entranced by watching them that she almost didn't notice when the Captain actually left. He shot her an unmistakably challenging look before he went, as if to say, _Let's just see how well you manage,_ as if he was expecting a telegram to Vienna with the news that his children had just run off another governess. But Maria raised her head and stared back at him with a hard, direct gaze, refusing to be cowed. _Besides what you see, Captain, I have confidence in me._

He shot that look at Maria, and then, he left. He walked out to his motor-car and was gone, off to Vienna for he-wasn't-sure-how-long, leaving his children with a new governess that they'd just met yesterday, who was practically still a stranger to them. He didn't wave goodbye. He didn't look over his shoulder. Maria watched the children's faces as he drove away and thought, _No wonder you all act like little hellions_.

She had to bite her lip to keep from saying it aloud.

* * *

Maria ate breakfast with the children after the Captain left, and her jaw nearly dropped when she saw the spread of food that had been laid out for them. Of course, they'd all eaten very well at dinner last night too, but there, the courses had been served one at a time, and it hadn't seemed like so much. Breakfast was less formal, and the food had simply been set in the center of the table, for her and the children to serve themselves.

There was one plate with the highest stack of pancakes that Maria had ever seen, and a tumbler of maple syrup beside it. Another plate held fresh apple strudel sprinkled with cinnamon, and there was a huge dish of scrambled eggs sprinkled with cheese. There were hot sausages, cold fruits, pitchers of milk and orange juice – Maria would have stood there gaping at it all, had she not remembered her grandmother's old saying just in time. _Close your mouth, please, we are not a codfish._

Even more shocking that the sight of so much food was the way the children simply sat down and began eating, clearly used to such abundance. They wouldn't even have stopped to say Grace had Maria not chided them into it.

"Children, haven't we forgotten to thank the Lord?" she asked, just as she had at dinner last night, and they all set their silverware down and bowed their heads, but a few of them shot disgusted, wary looks at her as they did so. She felt then, for the first time, a twinge of resentment towards these children, who had so much and took it all for granted.

But her resentment vanished when she remembered the Captain's back, walking away from them. Yes, they had so much, but in other ways, they were quite poor.

During breakfast, Maria noticed again how much Liesl and Friedrich acted like parents to their younger siblings. Gretl was gobbling down her pancakes much too quickly, and Maria was just about to tell her to take smaller bites when Liesl glanced around the table and said smoothly, "Gretl, don't eat your pancakes two at a time. Friedrich, take one of those off her plate."

And Friedrich, just as smoothly, swooped in with his fork, speared Gretl's top pancake, and moved to a spare plate on the table. Gretl glared at him, but Friedrich just gestured to the pancake still in front of her and said firmly, "Finish that one first, and then we'll see if you have room for another."

"But Kurt eats _his_ pancakes two at a time," Gretl argued.

"Kurt is bigger than you," Liesl answered automatically, sipping her coffee. Maria had noticed – with raised eyebrows – that Liesl was drinking black coffee with her breakfast, not milk or juice. _She_ had certainly never drunken coffee at sixteen.

"And besides," Brigitta added, with a sly grin on her face, "Kurt isn't even a boy. He's some sort of eating machine."

The children all laughed at that, except for Kurt, who glared at Brigitta and snipped, "Very funny." But his mouth was so full of pancakes that his words were almost unintelligible, which only made his siblings laugh harder. Maria almost laughed too, but she hid her smile behind a glass of orange juice, not wanting to hurt Kurt's feelings.

These children were more like an entire family all to themselves than like seven siblings, and Maria wondered, as she ate, how long Liesl and Friedrich had been acting like parents to the younger ones. Since their mother died? It was no wonder that Liesl had snuck out last night to go walking with the boy who delivered the telegram. She needed some time to just be a regular sixteen-year-old. Maria felt that she could use this to her advantage. She still believed what she'd said in her prayers last night, that God had brought her to this family to help the children prepare for a new mother, the Baroness. Liesl and Friedrich were clearly used to looking after their siblings, but surely they would like some help with that? If Maria could get them to hand the reins over to her, then she could hand them over to the Captain and Baroness Schraeder, when they returned from Vienna together, and that would make the transition that much easier.


	4. Playclothes

I'm very grateful, once again, to readers who have taken the time to review. I hope you'll enjoy this update.

* * *

 **Chapter 3  
Playclothes  
**

After breakfast, the children all looked at her with _Well, now what?_ expressions, like they had when she'd stopped singing to shut her window during the thunderstorm, and that was when Maria clapped her hands together and told them her idea.

"I'm a rather good seamstress, you see," she explained. "I've been able to sew my own clothes for some time. Frau Schmidt told me that there are going to be new drapes for the windows in my room, and it seems a shame to let the old ones go to waste. I think, if you'll let me measure each of you, I could sew playclothes for you children quite easily out of the old curtains."

It was a difficult to gauge the children's reactions, for they immediately all began arguing and talking over each other.

"Playclothes? Father doesn't allow us any time to play."

"Father's off in Vienna. Who's going to tell him? _You_?"

"Well, what's he going to say when he comes back? He said he was bringing Baroness Schraeder back with him, remember?"

"Fraulein Maria's curtains have ugly green patterns all over," Louisa scoffed, with a roll of her eyes that was all the worst of teenage-girl attitude. Maria had a feeling that Louisa might take the longest to open up. "I am _not_ wearing them."

Maria was listening to them talk, and then she realized... she was listening to them _talk_ – with their voices, not their eyes and expressions. From what she had observed, these children didn't really need words to speak to each other. They could've said all of this silently, without her knowing, but they weren't. Maria listened to them go on, debating her idea, and the sound of their voices alone was enough to make her heart sing. Slowly but surely, she was making progress with these children.

"If we go around wearing old curtains, people will laugh at us."

" _I_ think it could be fun to wear a curtain."

"And I'd like to have some clothes to play and get dirty in."

"Yes, me too!"

"Should we decide at the next meeting?"

"The next meeting is days away!"

There it was again – _the next meeting_. She remembered hearing Liesl and Friedrich mention it last night, too. She was more curious than ever about this mysterious meeting, but before she could ask, she noticed that one of the children had slipped out of the room.

"Wait a minute," Maria interrupted loudly. "Where's Gretl?"

The six older children fell silent and looked around for her, but before they even had time to wonder where Gretl had gone, she came back into the room. She skipped right over to Maria, holding a book that was much too thick for any five-year-old to read.

"Fraulein Maria, can you make me _overalls_?" she asked excitedly, holding the book up to her. "I want _overalls_ , like his."

Maria smiled. The book's cover showed a drawing of a boy in a wide-brimmed straw hat and patchwork overalls. Maria had never read it, but she recognized the title as a German translation of some American book. _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_.

Maria was about to ask Gretl where she had gotten it, but apparently, Liesl already knew. "Brigitta," she said sternly, glaring at her sister, "have you been reading out of that to Gretl? That book is _not_ appropriate for her."

Brigitta glared back. "I haven't been reading to her from it," she huffed defensively. "I've just been letting her look at the drawings. Honestly, Liesl, she's just learning her ABCs. You think she would be interested in hearing _Huckleberry Finn_?"

"Well, now, there's no harm just in letting her look at the drawings," Maria said quickly, trying to settle the waters. She flipped through the book and saw illustrations of the overalled boy and a man fishing and rafting down a river. "It's just an adventure story, isn't it?"

"It's more... moralistic," Brigitta corrected. "It's about how Huck realizes that Jim has more value as a person than he's given by the society they live in."

"Stop it!" Kurt suddenly yelled, startling them all. He pressed both hands over his ears. "I won't listen! I won't learn _anything_ during summer vacation!"

Friedrich rolled his eyes, tugged his brother's arm down, and asked, "Oh, relax, Kurt. Why don't you just tune out Brigitta like you do your teachers at school?"

The other children giggled, and Maria did, too. She felt that little thrill again, at having learned something new and interesting about her charges. Brigitta was only ten. Who would have ever thought that a ten-year-old girl would be bright enough to even read a book like _Huckleberry Finn_ , much less enjoy it, much less understand it? Yes, she would wager that these children were full of surprises.

Gretl tugged on her skirt, distracting her. "Fraulein Maria, _can_ you?" she asked again. "Can you make me overalls? I want overalls like his."

Maria looked again at the wide, baggy shape of Huck's patched-up overalls. "Well, I can't make overalls _exactly_ like his, Gretl," she smiled, "but I can get pretty close, yes."

"Goody!" Gretl exclaimed, jumping up and down a bit.

Her enthusiasm was hard to resist. Kurt stepped closer and asked, "Can you really make us all clothes out the curtains? Have you got curtains enough?"

"Yes, I think so. I took them down last night and measured them out. I asked your f – " But Maria stopped abruptly. She probably shouldn't say that she'd asked the Captain for material to make playclothes for the children but he'd refused. The relationship between the Captain and his children was bad enough already, and the Lord had brought her to this family to help make it better, not worse. She _would_ make it better.

"You'll make playclothes for us, even though Father doesn't allow us any time to play?" Liesl asked, and she raised her eyebrows, as if in a challenge. It _was_ a challenge, Maria suddenly realized – a challenge to directly, deliberately disobey the orders of their father, her employer. Except for the two littlest girls, the other children all looked at her, awaiting her answer, and the mood in the room grew tense.

Maria hesitated, wondering for a moment if maybe she shouldn't make playclothes for the children after all. But then the Captain's stern voice repeated in her head. _You will see to it that they conduct themselves at all times with orderliness and decorum_ , and she nearly scoffed again. She'd never heard of anything so ridiculous as not letting children act like children. "Well," she answered Liesl evenly, "I'm supposed to, ah, _strictly enforce bedtime_ , I think were his words, and you've all seen what a failure I was at that."

The children giggled again, remembering how much fun they'd had in Maria's room during the thunderstorm last night. Maria saw a few more of them soften, and she felt relieved, knowing that she had just won another battle.


	5. Needles Pulling Thread

As a lifelong SoM fan, something that I always wanted to see was Maria actually making the kids' clothes. The movie cut so fast that it almost made it seem like she sewed them all overnight!

* * *

 **Chapter 4**  
 **Needles Pulling Thread**

Maria had planned to sew matching outfits for Marta and Gretl. That stormy night in her room, when the idea first came to her, she had drawn up patterns for the most adorable little eyelet dresses. She had been eager to make them and see how cute they looked on the girls, but now Gretl wanted overalls like Huckleberry Finn's, and Marta, as it turned out, didn't want a dress, either. She too wanted clothes that she'd seen on a boy in a book.

"I just started reading _Winnie-the-Pooh_ ," Marta said, in her soft little voice. She shyly held the book out to Maria. "I want playclothes like Christopher Robin's. Can you make them?"

Maria peered at the illustration. It was the most darling drawing of a little boy – Christopher Robin, she supposed – and a bear leaning back-to-back against each other, and the boy wore a loose-fitting tunic shirt over a pair of shorts. "Why, yes," Maria said, mentally scrapping her plans for matching eyelet dresses, "I think I can make that quite easily."

She flipped through the book a little further and saw another illustration, this one of the boy and bear skipping hand-in-hand through a forest. It looked too adorable for words. "This looks like such a good book, too," she said to Marta. "Could we read some of it together?"

Marta grinned and nodded, delighted.

The children all consented to let Maria measure them, but the older ones, even those who wanted new playclothes, weren't interested in the actual process of sewing them. The three youngest girls, though, gathered around as she worked and watched with keen interest. Brigitta fetched scissors and thread for Maria, Gretl talked almost non-stop about her overalls, and Marta was fascinated by the noise and movement of the sewing machine.

"Where did you get this sewing machine?" Marta asked, watching it glisten and shine. Maria had set it up on a table in front of a sunny window overlooking the garden, in a spare room that was quickly turning into an excellent sewing room.

"Liesl found it for me," Maria said, wetting an end of thread in her mouth. "It was in a closet somewhere, I think."

Whenever it had been, the sewing machine had certainly been there for some time, for when Liesl first presented it to her, it was covered in so much dust that Maria almost didn't want to take it. She was so sure that it would be unusable, full of rust and broken parts. But she was wrong. Once she'd blown the dust off, she'd found a sewing machine that was still perfectly good. She'd cleaned it up and now it was running smoothly, almost like new.

"Oh, yes," Marta suddenly said, as if she'd just remembered. "It belonged to Fraulein Helga. But she forgot it, I guess."

Brigitta looked at her little sister with a gaze that was even more direct than unusual. "It belonged to our _mother_ , Marta," she said edgily.

Maria's leg had been pumping the foot pedal steadily, but at this, she fumbled and missed a beat. Liesl had failed to mention _that_. "It… did?" she asked, hoping that she didn't sound as stupid as she felt. Brigitta's gaze was now on her, still much too direct, and Maria looked under the table to find the foot pedal again.

"Fraulein Helga was just the last person who tried to use it," Brigitta went on. "She wanted to make… I don't remember what, but she tried to make something on it, but it came out all wrong. She said there was something wrong with the machine."

Maria flashed back to the exchange she had with the Captain, right after she first arrived. _What's wrong with the children, sir? Oh, there's nothing wrong with the children. Only their governesses._ What was it about this house that made people lay the blame down in the wrong places?

"Well, there's nothing wrong with the machine," Maria said briskly. "It was just stiff from not being used in so long. It took me a while to get it working right again. She probably just wasn't patient enough with it."

Then she pursed her lips and remembered what she'd learned in the abbey about not talking out of turn, and she forced herself to stay silent, but in her head, she thought, _She probably wasn't patient enough with you children, either_. Probably _none_ of their previous governesses had been patient enough or had given these children the chance that they deserved, and Maria felt almost as angry with them as she did with the Captain.

* * *

Out of the older children, Kurt was the first one to join in the sewing. He was eager to have clothes that he could run and play ball in, and he was willing to do anything, even disdainful "girl stuff," like sewing, to get them finished faster. Luckily, Maria had just finished the body of his shirt – she still had to attach the sleeves, but she could do that later – and so she tasked him with sewing on the buttons, which was simple enough even for a eleven-year-old boy with no sewing experience. Then, because boys that age had to make everything into a competition, Friedrich said, "I'll bet _I_ can sew buttons on faster than you can," and joined him. The girls giggled at the sight of their brothers with needles and thread.

Maria gave Louisa and Brigitta another simple project, sewing a headband out of a scrap piece of curtain. They agreed to work on it together and take turns wearing it after it was finished. Liesl was very quiet – almost suspiciously so – seemed content to simply watch the rest of them, and Marta and Gretl played with the measuring tape, whenever it wasn't in use. They made a game of pulling the tape out all the way and letting it snap back up. Gretl asked constant questions about her overalls – "Fraulein Maria, what are you doing now? Is that part of my overalls?" – and occasionally, one of the older children said, "I never knew sewing could be fun" or "This really doesn't look like a curtain anymore. You'd never know."

It was a pleasanter day than Maria would've hoped for. There were no toads in her pocket, no pinecones on her chair, no tricks, no shifty, silent conversations, no talk about getting rid of the new governess. The cook served their lunch, bratwurst and sauerkraut with lemonade, right there in the sewing room; Maria let the children eat on the floor, which they all enjoyed. They kept helping her with their new clothes right through the afternoon, until she said that they had been cooped up inside for too long and sent them outdoors to play until dinner.

The children ran outside to the garden like a stampede of wild horses – all except Liesl, who strolled slowly out of the room, her blue eyes lingering on the sewing machine that had once belonged to her mother.

"Liesl, how do you like the dress I'm making you?" Maria asked her brightly, spreading Liesl's in-progress dress across a table. "It should look just lovely over a white blouse, I think."

But Liesl didn't answer her. Instead, she leaned down and picked up the tape measure from where Marta and Gretl had left it on the floor. "You kept letting them play with this," she said slowly, not looking at Maria. "Weren't you afraid they would break it?"

Liesl's first words to her suddenly flitted through Maria's head again. _"I'm sixteen-years-old, and I don't need a governess."_ She was only sixteen, and yet she practically acted more like a mother to her younger siblings than an older sister. Maria had thought that she might like a break from so much responsibility, but perhaps that had been naive of her. Perhaps Liesl felt threatened by another woman moving in on her territory.

Maria suddenly felt foolish and too young, as if she were barely older than sixteen herself. She decided to fall back on the truth. "Honestly, it never occurred to me they might break it," she admitted, laughing weakly.

Liesl looked at her sharply. "You really _don't_ know anything about being a governess, _do_ you?" she asked, her tone somewhere between angry and amazed. Maria faltered, and before she could respond, Liesl added, "You don't know anything at all," and abruptly left the room. Maria could only stand there uncertainly, her good feeling draining away, wondering whether she had really made any progress at all.


	6. Tea with Jam and Bread

This chapter didn't go exactly as I planned. I had a chapter about Marta's actual birthday almost completely finished when this chapter popped into my head instead. Marta's birthday will now start in Chapter 6.

* * *

 **Chapter 5**  
 **Tea with Jam and Bread**

The next day was Sunday, Maria's first Sunday at the von Trapp mansion. The family didn't go to church – of course, she hadn't expected them to, when they didn't even say Grace before meals until she reminded them – but they did have their own special routine for Sunday mornings. As soon as they were done eating breakfast, the children all got up – almost in unison, as if on some hidden signal – and hurried upstairs so quickly that before Maria could even ask them where they were going, they'd disappeared inside their nursery and shut the door.

Werner, the under-butler, came in to clear away the breakfast dishes and found Maria still sitting at the table by herself, looking bewildered. "The children always have a meeting amongst themselves on Sunday mornings," he told her.

 _A meeting_! So at last, the children were having this mysterious meeting that Maria had heard them mention before. But she pretended to know nothing and tried to sound casual as she asked, "A meeting? Whatever about?"

"Goodness knows," Werner shrugged, "but on Sunday mornings at least, this house is quiet."

The house was quiet indeed – _too_ quiet, with all the children shut up in their nursery. Maria just knew that this meeting had to be about _her_. The children were likely debating whether to let her stay on as their governess, or to try getting rid of her. She wondered which of them were arguing against her, and which in her favor. She was so curious that she thought about trying to eavesdrop outside the nursery door... but she didn't, of course. That would be no way to win the children's trust, and besides, they had more experience with sneaking about than she did and would probably catch her at it.

The silence made the house seem even bigger and more intimidating, like it had when Maria first arrived. She used the free time to read her Bible and play her guitar. She wanted to get some more sewing done on the children's playclothes, but she knew that working on the Sabbath was a sin. She was glad when, mid-morning, Frau Schmidt invited her to join her for tea in the parlor. She liked Frau Schmidt and had come to think of the head housekeeper as her ally in the von Trapp household – not like Franz, whom she mistrusted for some reason that she couldn't quite name. Every time she saw him, she remembered how he'd sneered at her when she'd assumed that he was the Captain.

But the rest of the household servants seemed to be on Maria's side. Besides Frau Schmidt and Franz, there was an under-butler, an upstairs maid, a downstairs maid, a cook, and a gardener. Frau Schmidt's job was more to oversee the other servants than to do any housework herself, and Maria was impressed at how smoothly she kept the whole household running. Frau Schmidt, in turn, was impressed with the children's young new governess.

"The maids and the cook are still talking about how you made them cry over their dinner," Frau Schmidt said, with a gleam of admiration in her eye, as she and Maria sat down to tea.

"Why, thank you," Maria said, hiding her smile behind her teacup. Pride was a sin, but she couldn't deny how proud she felt to hear a word of praise. She was glad for this opportunity to talk to Frau Schmidt, for there was something that she'd been meaning to ask her. "I know Marta's birthday is only two days away now. I was wondering if the Captain bought her a gift before he left, or is going to send her something from Vienna?"

There hadn't been any correspondence from the Captain since he'd left last week – not so much as a postcard – but surely, even he wouldn't let his daughter's birthday go by without making sure that she had a present.

But Frau Schmidt shook her head. "No, the Captain wrote a check for Marta before he left. He asked me to give it to her on Tuesday."

 _A check?_ Maria stared, and Frau Schmidt added, "Well, you could give it to her, if you like."

"No, no, it's not that. It's just... that is, a _check_? He's giving her a _check_ for her birthday?"

"The Captain always gives his children a check on their birthdays," Frau Schmidt answered. She pursed her lips, as if she disapproved of this too, but didn't want to say so.

Maria took a bite of tea-cake and fell silent, thinking this over. A check might make a good gift for some of the older children, but Marta was turning _seven_. It wasn't as if she would be hard to shop for. Why, she and Gretl had made a game out of playing with Maria's tape measure. She would be happy with any toy the Captain gave her. But then Maria remembered the Captain's orders again. _Conduct themselves at all times with orderliness and decorum..._ He didn't allow his children any time to play, so why _would_ he give them toys? Of course he would only give them checks. She sighed and sipped her tea.

Frau Schmidt glanced at her and hesitated, as if debating whether to share this, but then she said, "The Captain used to give them a birthday card, too. He would put the check inside it. But a few years ago... let me think... yes, it was when Kurt turned nine... I remember the Captain gave him a birthday card with a check in it, but on the card, he'd written, _Happy 8th Birthday, Kurt_."

Maria cringed and put down her teacup. "He got his age wrong?"

Frau Schmidt nodded. "Kurt was so upset, he cried, poor boy," she said pityingly, "and the Captain hasn't given any of them a birthday card since."

Maria sat up straighter. "But does that mean... that Marta won't get any birthday presents besides a check?" she asked, so alarmed that she was ready to put down her teacup, get up, and run full-speed out of the house and to Salzburg to buy her something.

But Frau Schmidt waved her hand. "Oh no, her siblings have bought her something. They always do. Whenever one of the children has a birthday, the others all chip a little and buy a present. I see to it that the cook serves a cake after dinner, and we'll sing _Happy Birthday,_ and Marta will get the check and whatever it is that her siblings have gotten her." She paused and smiled reassuringly. "You needn't think birthdays in this house are _completely_ glum."

But Maria could not return her smile. She was too busy thinking about the life that Marta and Gretl had grown up knowing. Their father gave them only a check on their birthdays and paid little attention to them for the rest of the year. Their older siblings took care of them, while governesses came and went, none of them ever staying long enough for the girls to get attached. And that was how life had gone on for most, if not all, of the youngest children's memories.

Since that was all that they had ever known, did they accept it as normal? Or did they sense, somehow, that this was not how families were supposed to be? Did they have some instinct that your father, not your older siblings, was supposed to act like a parent? Could they miss something that they'd never known? Maria wondered, but she had no answers.

She thought back to her first dinner with the von Trapp family, and the Captain's blunt announcement that he would be leaving for Vienna. The older children had protested – "Not again, Father!" – but had the younger ones? Maria couldn't quite remember, but she did remember Gretl's little voice asking, "How long will you be gone this time, Father?" Had she been sad, or simply curious? Did she think it normal that her father was going away again, or did she wonder why he did it?

Maria and Frau Schmidt were still at tea when the children finally emerged from their meeting. Maria's eyes happened to fall on Gretl as she came downstairs from the nursery. The girl was smoothing down her hair, and Maria wondered what she might've done during the meeting to muss her hair.

 _I wonder,_ she thought. _I wonder what you wonder._


	7. Points and Parasols

This chapter was a lot of fun to write, since it covers something else that I've always wanted to see - Marta's birthday!

Not to brag, but I thought this might be a fun tidbit for readers to know: whenever I have a chance to name a character, I use one of the names of the real von Trapp children. So far, there's Werner the under-butler and in this chapter, Fraulein Johanna. I hope to work in a few more of their names as the story continues!

* * *

 **Chapter 6**  
 **Points and Parasols**

Maria's first Tuesday at the von Trapp mansion was Marta's seventh birthday. She had been looking forward to the day, but that morning, she was woken up very early by the sound of the children quietly talking and moving around in the hall outside her room. Suddenly wide awake, Maria bolted up in bed with a feeling of dread in her chest. The children weren't lazy, but it was quite unlike them to get up earlier than usual. What if they were playing another trick on her? What if they were planting spiders – or worse! – outside her door right now?

She sprang out of bed and started for the door, but she stopped herself just in time. Maria would lose face with the children if she let them see her looking sleep-raggled, so she put on her dressing-gown, combed her hair, washed her face, and stepped into the hall looking like the confident governess that she was determined to be.

But the children weren't actually outside her door. They were a little down the hall, outside the door to Marta and Gretl's shared bedroom. They were all sitting or kneeling on the floor in a circle, their hands a busy flurry of pink paper and shiny scissors. When Maria noticed that there were only six of them, minus Marta, she knew that they must be working on some surprise for her birthday. She smiled, and her feeling of dread vanished away.

"What are you d – " she started to ask, walking down the hall towards them, but she was interrupted.

"Shhh!" Kurt hushed her, holding one finger to his lips. "Fraulein Maria, be quiet, or you'll wake Marta."

Maria sat on the floor with them, and the children very quietly explained what they were doing. They had gotten a packet of construction paper in all pink, and they were cutting out little paper parasols. They said that a pink parasol was what Marta wanted most for her birthday, but that she hadn't settled on it until just a few days ago – the day before Maria arrived, in fact – and by then, her siblings had already each chipped in a little money and bought her something else. Now, they were cutting out as many little pink paper parasols as they could, and they planned to wake up Marta by showering them on her bed and cheering, "Happy birthday!"

This was the birthday tradition among the von Trapp children, Maria learned. The other six children each chipped in a little of their pocket money – Maria didn't want to ask how much pocket money the Captain gave them, but she suspected that it wasn't much, even though the man was obviously filthy rich – and bought them one gift. Then, on the day of their birthday, the other six got up early and woke the birthday boy or girl by cheering and showering them with something in bed.

"What kind of things?" Maria asked.

"Oh, all sorts of things," Friedrich said. "Anything we can get a lot of easily. We always try to do something different. Let's see, we've done cotton balls, leaves, fresh-mowed grass, puzzle pieces..."

"Lots of things with paper," Liesl added. "Paper airplanes, paper snowflakes, crumbled-up paper balls, and now paper parasols."

"It's the _best_ thing about having a birthday," Brigitta whispered excitedly, "seeing what you're going to be woken up with in the morning. You never know _what_ the others are going to come up with."

"I've been thinking, for Kurt's birthday," Friedrich said, "we should get some sort of soft candies, like Turkish Delight, or something, and throw them all on him and let him eat his way out."

He meant it to be teasing, but far from being offended, Kurt looked delighted. "Ooh, I hope you _do_!" he grinned, and the others chuckled.

"For Louisa's birthday in the spring," Brigitta remembered, "we all woke up very early and went out to the gardens and picked all the flowers we could. We pulled them all apart into petals and threw them on her to wake her up, and do you know what, Fraulein Maria? Our room smelled just heavenly for days and days after, even after we had to throw the flowers out."

Maria smiled. She felt a sad certainty that their father didn't do much for their birthdays, and she was impressed by how these children had created their own way to make each of their birthdays special without his involvement.

"Fraulein Johanna pitched a fit about the mess, though," Louisa went on. "The flower petals got all over the floor, and we tracked them everywhere, and then a bee – somehow a bee got into the house with all the flowers, and it flew out of nowhere and stung Fraulein Johanna. Ooh, remember how loud she screamed?"

The children all giggled wickedly, even little Gretl, delighted at how much they had tormented their old governess. Maria had been busy cutting out another paper parasol, but now, her hands slowed and stopped. She had been so charmed by their birthday tradition that she'd almost forgotten that these children could be terrible, too. She'd almost forgotten that they'd gone through eleven – _eleven!_ – other governesses before her.

"Fraulein Johanna packed her bags and left that same day," Kurt said proudly, "and that counted as double points for everyone."

Maria felt that same nagging doubt that she'd when the Reverend Mother first told her that the Captain had had such a difficult time keeping a governess for his children. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know, but she forced herself to ask, "Er, double points?"

Liesl raised her head, and her cool blue eyes met Maria's with that challenging gaze again. "Oh, we have a points system for playing tricks on our governesses," she said with a deliberate casualness. "We all vote and award points based on creativity, execution, and overall effect."

"And on what it does to the governess," Brigitta went on. "You get so many points for making a governess cry or scream, and if you can actually make her pack her bags and leave, well, that gets you the most points. _And_ if you make her do any of those things without even meaning to, it counts double."

"And Father's reaction," Louisa added. "There are points for that, too. How red in the face he gets when he finds out, how long he yells at us about it."

Maria fumbled for words but found none. She couldn't believe how proudly they were talking about this points system, without the least bit of embarrassment or guilt. She couldn't believe that they were talking about it in front of _her_ , and in the _present_ tense. She wondered again if she'd really made any progress with these children at all. She wondered which one of them had gotten points for leaving that pinecone on her chair before dinner. Had they gotten extra points for how she'd jumped up and screamed? _You little hellions._

Then she noticed that Liesl was still watching her, and she remembered how crucial it was that she never look intimidated in front of the children. She picked up her pair of scissors again and asked calmly, "Really? And how do you keep track of who has the most points?"

"Oh, we have a big scoreboard in our nursery," Friedrich explained. He was watching her closely, too. "We tally points up on it."

Maria had no doubt that this points system of theirs was real, but she knew that the children were only talking about it in front of her because they wanted to ruffle her feathers again. She was quite proud of how nonchalant, even bored, she sounded when she said, "Well, that is a good idea. Perhaps I should make a scoreboard for _my_ room, to keep track of how many children I can make cry at dinner after they misbehave."

Her words had exactly the effect that she was hoping for, as a jolt of surprise ran through the children like an electric shock. Friedrich's eyes widened. Brigitta's mouth fell open a bit. Liesl narrowed her eyes, skeptic and suspicious. Kurt looked shocked, then had to press his lips together not to laugh. Louisa leaned in to Brigitta and whispered something in her ear. Maria couldn't be sure, but she thought she heard the words, "See, I told you she was tricky." The only one who didn't notice was little Gretl, who was too busy cutting out another paper parasol. Her tongue was pressed between her lips in concentration, and the whole conversation had gone right over her sweet little head. _Bless your heart,_ Maria thought.

These children might have had eleven other governesses, and they might have played tricks on all of them... but she felt certain that none of those other governesses had ever played tricks back.


	8. Marta's Birthday

I know there's been a long wait time between updates. Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you enjoy this chapter.

* * *

 **Chapter 7**  
 **Marta's Birthday**

Marta looked just like an angel, asleep on her pillow in the early-morning sunlight, when Maria and the other six children tiptoed inside the bedroom that she shared with Gretl. They all gathered around her bed, then cheered "Happy birthday!" and began showering her with the little pink paper parasols. Marta lept awake excitedly and when she grabbed one of the pink slips in her hand and saw what it was, she gasped with delight.

"A pink parasol!" she cried, laughing. "You _did_ get me one!"

" _One_?" Kurt repeated, offended. He dropped a few more of them over her head; they settled on her dark hair like snowflakes, and Maria suddenly wished that she had a camera. "We got you _dozens_ of them!"

"You did! Ooh, I _love_ them! This is the best birthday morning ever!" She picked up a handful of parasols from her bed and threw them over herself again and again.

Maria knew what a victory it was that the other children had let her join in with waking Marta up. She could tell that this birthday ritual was something that they'd thought up all on their own, and that they'd never let another governess join in before. Maria could tell too, from the grin on Marta's face, that even if this was all there was for her birthday – paper parasols and nothing more – she would've perfectly happy with it.

But there was more. That evening, as soon as they'd finished dinner, Liesl motioned to Friedrich, who lept up from his chair and switched off the lights. Liesl dashed through the swinging door into the kitchen and emerged again a moment later, carrying a fine chocolate cake with seven candles burning. She set it down in front of Marta, and they all joined in singing _Happy Birthday_ together – the first time that Maria had heard any of the children singing since she arrived. They were better singers than she'd expected, especially considering that this was probably the only opportunity to sing that they ever had – just one song, _Happy Birthday,_ just seven times a year.

After blowing out the candles, Marta was given her presents. Frau Schmidt handed her the check from the Captain, and Marta glanced at it, then set it aside without a word – as if it were a gift from some distant relative that she'd never met, instead of her own father. Maria glanced over her shoulder to look at it, and she noticed that in the memo line, where people usually wrote _telephone bill_ or _groceries_ , the Captain had written, _Happy birthday_. That was all – no indication of her age, no _Love, Father_ , no exclamation point at the end. Even his handwriting looked stiff, and Maria felt a new urge to throttle the man.

"And this is from us," Louisa announced, interrupting her thoughts, and she pulled a package wrapped in brown paper out from under the table. Marta grinned and ripped the paper off with as much enthusiasm as any seven-year-old.

Her present from her siblings was a book – _House at Pooh Corner_ , the sequel to the book she was reading now. Marta flipped it open to the title page and read aloud the message that her siblings had written there. _Happy 7th birthday to number six! With love_ , and beneath, they'd each signed their names. Gretl's signature was huge and crooked, taking up a quarter of the page.

"Well, do you like it?" Friedrich asked.

"I love it!" Marta exclaimed, leaning over to hug him, then the rest of her siblings. "Oh, thank you!"

It looked like a normal, happy birthday celebration, but Maria knew not to take it for granted. It wasn't quite normal, and it certainly hadn't been happy by accident. It had been happy because the older children, Liesl and Friedrich especially, worked so hard to make sure that their father's distance never effected the younger ones. The Captain had done nothing but write a check for Marta's birthday, but her brothers and sisters woke her up in the morning with pink parasols. They sang _Happy Birthday_ and ate cake with her. They had all chipped in and bought her a real present. They had stepped up in a way that they should never have had to, and learned to function not as seven children, but as an entire family themselves.

Maria had come to a decision. She would discuss it with Liesl and Friedrich tonight, after the younger children were in bed. For now, she pushed her chair back from the table and said briskly, "Well, this cake is quite delicious, but I think we'll all had enough for tonight."

Marta's eyes went to Maria, then to her birthday cake – there was still a good portion of it left – then to Liesl. Maria knew that she was used to getting orders like this from her older siblings, not from their governesses, and that support from the older children was crucial. When Liesl said, "She's quite right. We can finish the rest tomorrow," she felt so elated that she could've danced all night.

* * *

Maria hadn't been quite sure how Liesl and Friedrich might react to her idea, but she certainly wasn't expecting them to look at her as if she'd just lost her mind, which is what they both did when she told them later that night.

"You want to take us on an outing to Salzburg?" Friedrich repeated, incredulous. "All of us?"

Maria felt a bit bewildered, but she kept her voice firm. "Yes," she said, "just as soon as I'm finished sewing your playclothes. It should only take another day or two." She wanted to do something very special when she was done with the children's playclothes, something more than just letting them wear them around the grounds, and she'd decided on an outing through Salzburg and up to the mountains over the city.

Friedrich looked doubtfully at Liesl, who sat back and gave Maria an appraising stare. They were in Maria's room, and she and Friedrich were sitting on the sofa against the wall. "You said you didn't know anything about being a governess," she reminded her, folding her hands in her lap.

Maria sat up straighter on the bed. "Yes, and I said I'd need lots of advice." She got the feeling that was what Liesl was about to do now – not discourage her or try to scare her away, but give her some much-needed advice.

"Well, Salzburg is a big city," Liesl said, sounding much older than sixteen again. "There's a lot to see there, and the younger children would be too excited by it all to hold still. Do you realize how easy it would be for someone to wander off and get lost?"

"Yes, you're right, and that's why I wanted to wait until I'm done with these playclothes. It'll be much easier to keep track of everyone if you're all dressed alike." Gretl's overalls were lying across her desk chair – she'd brought them up from the sewing room to finish hemming the straps – and Maria stood now and picked them up, running one hand over the green-and-biege pattern. "There'll be a lot of people in Salzburg, but nobody else will be wearing clothes like this. If we're in a crowd, I should be able to look around and count seven curtains quickly enough."

Friedrich nodded, looking less doubtful, and Liesl said, actually sounding impressed, "That's a good idea."

"I plan to be very vigilant, too," Maria went on. "An outing with a lot of children can be like transporting prisoners. You have to watch very closely to make sure nobody wanders off."

Friedrich snickered. "Didn't you come from a convent? How would you know about transporting prisoners?"

Maria smiled. "Well, I suppose I don't, but I've read _The Count of Monte Cristo_ often enough."

Friedrich's mouth fell open. "Have you?" he asked excitedly. "That's one of my favorite books."

Maria grinned. In the abbey, the only book that anyone ever talked about was the Bible. "That makes sense," she said. " _He_ was impossible, too," and Friedrich laughed.

"Liesl and I could help you, too," he offered, nudging his sister's shoulder, "with keeping an eye on the younger ones when we're in Salz – "

It was a tempting offer – Maria knew that she could certainly use help with taking seven children to Salzburg and the mountains – but she stopped Friedrich before he could go any further. "Oh no," she said quickly, her voice quiet but firm. "I want you two to take the day off."

Liesl turned her face to the side and raised one eyebrow, and Maria suddenly remembered it was the same look that the Captain had given her at dinner on her first night with them. "The day off?" she repeated.

Maria crossed her room to them and sat on the arm of the sofa. "I've noticed how much you two do for the younger children," she said delicately, "and I'm very impressed. I've never seen such responsible teenagers, but you are still both teenagers, and I think you deserve a day to act like it. I want you two to just enjoy Salzburg and let me worry about the younger ones."

For a moment, Liesl and Friedrich simply stared at each other, their faces both a confused mix of emotions. They clearly hadn't been expecting this and didn't know how to take it. Had their father or former governesses ever given them a day off like this? Had they ever even noticed how much they did for their younger siblings? Maria remembered the conversation that she had overheard between Liesl and Friedrich on her first night with the family – making sure that their siblings went to bed on time and kept their rooms clean – and her heart panged with sadness for them. Yes, they were the oldest, but they were still just children themselves.

Liesl had often seemed older than sixteen, but now, as she looked from Friedrich back to Maria, it was the first time that she seemed younger than sixteen. Her face was still a confusion of emotions, but the gratitude and relief shone out, as if a heavy weight that she'd been carrying for too long had finally been lifted from her shoulders. Maria knew then that her earlier guess was right, that Liesl was tired of holding the reins and was ready to hand them over to someone else. Maria had to blink back tears when Liesl whispered softly, "Thank you."


	9. Turning Point

This story continues to not go as planned. :) I'd meant to write their trip to the mountains in this chapter, but then this happened instead!

* * *

 **Chapter 8**  
 **Turning Point**

It took Maria over a full week of sewing, and every single bit of her old curtains, to complete the children's playclothes. One night, after she finally finished the last piece of the last garment – a ruffled collar around the neck of Brigitta's dress – she stayed up late in the sewing room, arranging the clothes just so across the divan and chairs. The children didn't know that she had finished them, so after breakfast tomorrow, she would bring them in here and surprise them. She couldn't wait to see the looks on their faces.

And the next morning, as she'd hoped, the children were all pleased with their new playclothes, but none of them were nearly as pleased as Gretl. As soon as she stepped into the sewing room and saw her overalls, she flung both her arms up into air.

"My overalls!" she cried, as if it were Christmas morning. She ran across the room to where Maria had laid her overalls out on the divan, and then, right in front of them all, she unbuttoned the back of her sailor dress and yanked it off over her head, pulling strands of hair loose from her tightly-braided buns. Her shoes and stockings went next, and then, she pulled her overalls on over her underclothes, wiggling with excitement so much that her fingers could barely button the straps.

"Hooray!" she yelled once she had them on, and then she ran out to look at herself in the hall mirror, since there wasn't one in the sewing room.

A few of her older siblings were trying not to giggle, but Louisa scoffed and rolled her eyes. "She is so weird," she muttered.

"You were the same way when you were her age," Liesl answered calmly. Louisa shot her a skeptic glare but said nothing more.

Maria had considered taking the children out to Salzburg on the same day that she gave them their playclothes, but she'd decided against it. New clothes were enough for one day, and besides, she needed the children to test them out before she let them leave the grounds wearing them. She couldn't risk having a button pop off or a hem come undone in the middle of Salzburg.

The other six children went upstairs to their rooms to change into their clothes, then met in the nursery to admire each other's. "Look, it fits just perfectly." "I don't think you'd ever guess this used to be a curtain, if you didn't know." "Look, Fraulein Maria gave mine nice deep pockets, just like I wanted." "Ooh, look at the little bows she sewed on Marta's shoulders. Isn't that adorable?" "Turn around, I want to see yours from this side." "Isn't it funny to think we're all wearing curtains?" And Gretl said over and over again, "Look at my overalls. Fraulein Maria made me overalls."

Maria stood in the nursery doorway and watched them, smiling. The children were so engrossed in their new clothes that they didn't notice her for several minutes. When she had their attention, she said, "I have to know if there's anything I need to adjust or sew again, and the only way to find out is to test them, so I want you all to go right outside and start playing."

The children grinned at each other – imagine being ordered to play instead of march! They didn't need to be told twice. Their father didn't allow them any time to play, but it couldn't have always been that way, for they grabbed a few toys from around their nursery – a ball, a jump rope, and a rolling-hoop and stick – before they ran downstairs and out onto the lawn.

Outside, it was a beautiful, sunny summer day, warm but not too hot. Birds were singing in every tree, and the lake waters glistened in the sun. Maria's old doubts about being these children's governess felt far away as she watched them running about, playing tag and turning cartwheels, jumping rope and throwing the ball. She felt that she'd reached a turning point with the children. They were wearing the clothes that she'd made for them, and she knew that they weren't going to try to get rid of her anymore. The summer now seemed to stretch out luxuriously before her, full of glorious, golden days like this one all the way to September.

After some time, Louisa said, "Ooh, I know, let's play Spud!"

Spud, Maria learned, was a ball game that the children all played together. They explained the rules to her, for they wanted her to be the referee and make the first throw. The children each had a number – one through seven, in the order of their ages – and to start the game, Maria had to throw the ball high up into the air and call a number. She called Four, which meant that Kurt was It and had to catch the ball while the other children ran. When he caught it, he yelled and his siblings all had to freeze in place where they were. Kurt could take two steps in any direction and try to throw the ball at one of them. Whoever he hit had an S, but if he missed, then he had an S; Maria's job as referee was to mark the letters down on a piece of paper with all their names. Then Kurt threw the ball up and called out another number. When one of them reached enough numbers to spell out Spud, they were out. As the game went on, the children were out one by one, and they joined Maria where she was sitting in the shade under a tree.

Louisa, being between two boys, was the most athletic of the girls, and she won the first round of Spud. Maria made them all sit in the shade for a while and drink some cold lemonade – she'd had one of the maids bring a pitcher and tray of glasses from the kitchen – and asked them where they learned this game.

"At school," Marta answered. "All the kids play it at recess."

Maria was glad of that. At least the children were able to play at school a little, even if their father didn't allow it at home. She picked up their ball to have a closer look at it. She turned it over in her hands and ran her fingers along the seams in the leather. It showed some wear, but still, it looked mostly new, which made her curious. She couldn't imagine the Captain buying it for them. Perhaps it had been a birthday present for one of them from the others.

"And where did you get this ball?" she asked.

Friedrich looked up at her from where he'd flopped down the grass. His new clothes were covered in grassstains, which made Maria smile, for that was exactly as it should be. "Our Uncle Max gave it to us," he said, brushing his sweaty bangs away from his face, "the last time he came to visit."

"It was in the spring," Liesl added, and then the story began moving from one of the children to another.

"He refereed a game of Spud for us, like you just did."

"And the ball we were using back then was so old and worn-out."

"And right before he left, Uncle Max gave us a new one."

"Father made a face like this," Brigitta said, doing an excellent imitation of the Captain's angry frown, "and he said, 'Max, you shouldn't be spending your money on such things.'"

Kurt finished the story, giggling, "And Uncle Max said, 'You're absolutely right, Georg. Next time, I'll take a bill out of your wallet and spend _your_ money.' He said it right as he was leaving, and then he winked at us and pretended to run out the door, as if Father would chase him. It was _so_ funny."

Maria laughed. She remembered the Captain saying that when he came home from Vienna, he would bring the Baronness and the children's Uncle Max. She liked the sound of this Uncle Max and was now quite eager to meet him. If the children's story was true, it was almost astonishing to her that the Captain let his brother – or brother-in-law, perhaps more likely – get away with such behavior.

"I'm glad he got us a new one, anyway," Friedrich said. "Our last ball was so old, we'd had it ever since..." But his voice trailed off, and a strangely old, far-away look came into his young eyes as he gazed out over the lawn, and he never said how long they'd had their last ball.

A silence fell over their group again, and it was only broken when Gretl tugged on Maria's skirt and asked, "Fraulein Maria, may I wear my overalls to bed tonight?" which made them all laugh.

"I'm glad you like them so much, Gretl," Maria answered, "but you need to wear your nightgown to bed."

"My goodness," Liesl suddenly said, setting down her glass of lemonade and sitting up straight. She looked around at her siblings as she went on, adominishing them like a mother, "Do you all realize that Fraulein Maria made these clothes for us, and none of us have even said _thank you_ to her yet?"

Marta and Gretl got to her first, flinging their warm, sweaty arms around her neck in a hug, and Gretl cried practically right in her ear, "Thank you _so much_ for my overalls, Fraulein Maria! I _love_ them!" And the older ones all gathered around her too, chorusing _Thank you, Fraulein Maria_ and _I really like mine_ and _I know it was a lot of work for you to make_. And Maria said a silent prayer of thanks, for she knew then, for certain, that she had turned a corner with these children.


	10. The Sound of Music

My goal with this story was to slow down the movie and spend more time with the kids, so I have to brag a little by pointing out that so far, most of the story has happened between Maria singing with the curtains and her leaving the villa with the children. That's eight chapters between one jump-cut - whew! Now, let's see how much further I can go with this.

On a more serious note, the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville NC happened while I was writing this chapter. As a Jewish American, it's disturbing to see such hatred rearing its head in my country in 2017, especially since our president won't unequivocally condemn it. So I found a way to work my feelings towards Neo-Nazis into this chapter. Remember, standing up to Nazis (and ripping their flags like Georg did) is a good idea, now more than ever.

* * *

 **Chapter 9**  
 **The Sound of Music**

As fine a day as it was when the children wore their playclothes for the first time, a few days later, they had one even better, for that was when Maria took them through Salzburg and up into the mountains. The children were so excited that they could barely sleep the night before, as if the next day were to be Christmas. They woke up early, raided the kitchen, and packed a lunch big enough to fill two picnic baskets. The boys brought their ball, the girls brought a jump rope and a deck of cards, and Maria brought her guitar in its case. For even better than showing these children her mountains, she intended to teach them to sing – or perhaps she wouldn't even have to teach them. Perhaps simply being in the mountains would move them to singing, just as it had done so often for Maria.

Between the picnic baskets and their toys, the children had a lot to carry, but it didn't slow them down a bit. Maria had her hands full keeping track of all of them in Salzburg, and she almost regretted not asking Liesl and Friedrich to help her keep an eye on the younger ones. When they crossed Mozart's Bridge over the Salzach, they stopped to look up and down the river from either side, and Marta stuck her head and shoulders between the lower railings bridge and leaned out much too far, until almost the whole upper half of her body was out over the water.

"I only wanted to play pooh-sticks," she said innocently, after Maria grabbed the hem of her tunic and pulled her back to safety.

When they walked through the Residenzplatz Square, Gretl climbed up to sit on the edge of the fountain – the same fountain that Maria had splashed on her way to the house, though that felt long-ago now. Gretl yanked off her sandals and splashed her bare feet in the water, and she would've jumped in fully and gone wading, but Maria grabbed the back of her overalls and pulled her down just in time.

"I only wanted to pet the ponies," Gretl said innocently, but Maria already knew that. She had tried to do the same thing once, when she was about Gretl's age, which was how she'd able to predict her behavior. She had tried to wade through the fountain to pet the horse statues spouting water in its center, and she'd gotten further than Gretl before her grandmother yanked her out. What a little troublemaker she had been – and what trouble these children could cause, even when, for a change, they _didn't_ mean to.

In the marketplace, Kurt wanted to buy sweets from every stand in the selling them. One merchant was giving out free samples of peppermint drops, but Maria saw him shake his head and wipe _Free samples_ off his little chalkboard after the seven von Trapp children passed by and each took one.

Almost every five steps she took – far more often than she'd anticipated – Maria had to look around her and count the seven sets of curtained playclothes, to make sure that nobody had wandered off or gotten lost. The first time she did it, she didn't count them using their names or by number. The notes of the musical scale played inside her head, almost of their own accord, as she looked around and laid eyes on each of her charges. _Do re mi fa so la ti._ Each time she did it, she thought that the notes suited the children more and more. Liesl's blue eyes were _do._ Friedrich's golden hair was _re._ Marta's pigtails were _la,_ and Gretl's sweet smile was _ti._ Once she nearly addressed Kurt as _fa._

She was grateful that she didn't lose track of any of them, for there was some sort of scuffle in the marketplace that day. Amidst all the merchants hocking their wares, there was a man wearing a red armband with a thick black swastika in its center. He was handing out pamphlets and talking about the Nazi party and what it could do for Austria. A second man approached him, and they began arguing in loud voices, and then Maria saw the second man draw back a fist and punch the Nazi so hard that he fell to the ground. She gasped and hurried the children away to a vegetable stand, where her attempts to juggle tomatoes made them all laugh and forget what they'd just seen.

But Maria didn't forget. The sight lingered in the back of her mind like a dark shadow. The abbey was kept very isolated from the outside world, and she'd been so busy with the von Trapp children since leaving it, that she had almost forgotten that things in Austria were changing.

The children didn't complain during the steep climb up the lowest mountain outside Salzburg, but they were all hungry by the time they reached the top, and they immediately sprawled out on the grass and unpacked their picnic baskets. After they'd eaten, Maria knew that the time was right. She opened her guitar case and gathered the children around her with the announcement that she was going to teach them to sing.

The Captain didn't allow any singing or music in the house, so Maria was surprised by how naturally, how _quickly,_ the children learned to sing. It was as if they'd been thirsting for music all their lives, and here she was, finally offering them a drink. They could sing the scales back to her after she'd only broken them down once.

After a moment, Maria understood why they learned so quickly. These children had been functioning as a whole family for years. They already knew how to work together. They already knew how to listen to each other, and that was much the same work as singing. They learned how to harmonize and layer their voices without Maria even needing to teach them, and by the time they came back down the mountain, they sounded almost like a choir that had been singing together for years.

By the time they returned to the villa that evening, Maria had a new song in her heart, and a new, rosy vision of what the future would be like for the von Trapps. She would teach the children a song to sing for Baroness Schraeder when she arrived from Vienna. Maria had felt so nervous for Baroness Schraeder – after all, the idea of becoming a new mother to seven strange children had be intimidating for any woman, even a baroness. But when the children sang to her, she would be won over and know that she was welcome in this family, and when the Captain heard them singing, surely his hard heart would be softened. Surely this would become a happy family, just as Maria had prayed on the night of the thunderstorm. She believed that the sound of music had a power second only to prayer.

The night of the thunderstorm felt long-ago now. Maria was so hopeful for the future that she completely forgot about the Nazi she'd seen in the marketplace. The day was so pleasant and sunny that she couldn't see the dark clouds on the horizon.


	11. Uncle Max's Letter

I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Max is just so darn fun. Even though this is and will remain a kid-focused story, there's a little hint of Georg/Maria here... and once you read it, you'll probably see why I don't usually write them. (I suck at it.) Another one of the real von Trapp's names is in here, too.

* * *

 **Chapter 10**  
 **Uncle Max's Letter**

 _Fraulein Maria, can we do this we do this every day?_ Louisa had asked her during that first glorious day on the mountains, but Maria didn't have anywhere near the energy to do it every day, or even every other day. It was a better day than she could've asked for, but it had been so exhausting that the next morning, even the youngest children slept in, and when Maria woke up, her feet still ached from all the walking.

It wasn't Sunday, but Maria decided to make it a day of rest and stay at the villa. The children didn't mind, for they received another surprise that day. It arrived during breakfast, when Franz walked in and set a package down next to Liesl's plate. "This was just delivered, miss," he said stiffly, giving a small bow before he left.

 _Finally!_ Maria thought, sitting up straighter with a little thrill of excitement in her chest. In the two weeks since Captain von Trapp had left for Vienna, there hadn't been one word from him – no telegrams, no telephone calls, not even so much as postcard. Maria never said one word about it, but each day, she felt herself growing a little angrier at him. How long did the man intend to go without communicating with his children? But now, _at last,_ he'd sent them not just a letter, but a whole package. Perhaps there was still hope for the Captain after all.

Liesl had been rather bleary-eyed over her coffee – typical sixteen-year-old in the morning – but when she saw the label on the package, she perked right up. "It's from Uncle Max!" she exclaimed to her siblings.

The other children cheered, and Maria smiled at their enthusiasm, but inside, her heart sank. There was still no word from the Captain, after all. Had the man forgotten that he even _had_ children?

They opened their uncle's package in the parlor after breakfast. He had sent them a bag of sour candy, and they settled on the floor in a circle and dumped it out between them. They began to divide it up between the seven of them, and Maria was touched when they offered her some pieces, too.

"Oh, no thank you," she said, shaking her head. "Your uncle sent that for you."

"Oh, he wouldn't mind if you have some," Friedrich said, pressing the pieces at her, and she decided to take them. Even though she felt that the battle was over between her and the children, she still counted it as a victory that they wanted to share their uncle's candy with her. He had sent a letter along with the candy, and while they all ate, Liesl read it out loud.

 _Dearest Liesl, Friedrich, Louisa, Kurt, Brigitta, Gretl, and... I'm forgetting someone, aren't I? Is it... Martine?_

Maria glanced quickly at Marta, worried that she would be hurt that her uncle had gotten her name wrong... but no, she was laughing, and so were all her siblings.

"Uncle Max always teases," Brigitta explained, when she saw Maria's expression. "He always pretends to forget someone's name in his letters. Last time, it was Friedrich. He thought his name was Fritz."

 _I'm currently traveling, scouting out new talent, but I hope to soon find myself in Vienna, where I shall strive to find your father and cause some trouble for him on your behalf. I bought some toys that I was going to send to you, but then I played with them and had so much fun that I decided to keep them for myself._

"He's teasing again," Marta said, giggling.

"I'm not so sure," Kurt argued. "I can see Uncle Max playing with toys."

 _So I am instead sending some candy – enough to satisfy all seven of you, I hope. Do eat it all at once and land your father with some hefty dentist bills. You know how much I enjoy costing_ _that_ _man_ _money._ _I_ _'_ _m sure you_ _'_ _re all keeping busy tormenting your latest g_ _overness_ _._

Maria blushed at this, and a few of the children snickered.

 _I can_ _'_ _t wait to hear all about it when I_ _'_ _m in S_ _alzburg_ _again._

 _Your humble servant, Uncle Max_

Maria was touched – and more curious than ever to meet this Uncle Max. It was so sweet of the man to keep in touch with his late sister's children like this. She just _knew_ that Max had to have been their mother's brother. He was too unlike the Captain to possibly be related to him, and besides, according to the label on the package, his last name was _Detweiler_ , not _von Trapp_.

The children put their uncle's letter in a special drawer in their nursery, where they apparently kept all correspondence from him. He sent them letters or postcards fairly regularly, and the children always looked forward to them.

"Look at the card he sent us last," Brigitta said, pulling it from the drawer and holding it up for Maria. "Isn't it funny?"

It was a birthday card, postmarked about a month before Maria's arrival at the villa, and inside it, Max had written, _I hope you'll forgive my bad memory for dates, but between the lot of you, I think one of you must be having a birthday about now!_ His birthday card was a shot in the dark, but at least he'd written a message and sent it with good intentions. She remembered how for Marta's birthday, the Captain had given her only a bare check, with no birthday card, no message at all.

Gretl tugged on Maria's skirt, pointing to a map of Austria that was tacked to one wall. "Fraulein Maria, show me where Uncle Max is?" she asked.

 _Currently traveling,_ his letter had said, but the package was postmarked from Wels, so Maria pointed it out to her. Then Gretl wanted to know where Vienna was, so Maria showed that to her, too. Gretl raised one hand to the map and measured the distances between Salzburg, Wals, and Vienna with her chubby fingers.

"Uncle Max is closer to us than Father is," she told Maria, and although she meant that Max was physically closer, Maria knew that it was true in other ways, too.

* * *

That afternoon, while the children were playing outside, Maria slipped inside and went to the downstairs study, where, as they did every day, Frau Schmidt and Franz were going over the ledger books for the household accounts.

"Excuse me," Maria said, and Frau Schmidt looked up from punching numbers into a calculator. "I just wanted to know something. Could you tell me, do the children have any other aunts or uncles, besides Herr Detweiler?"

Franz frowned at her with that _I'm-the-old-butler_ expression that she remembered too well. "Herr Detweiler," he said curtly, "is not the children's uncle."

"But I thought..."

"Oh, the children have always _called_ him uncle," Frau Schmidt explained, "because he's an old friend of the Captain's."

Maria's mouth fell open. If Frau Schmidt had just said that Captain von Trapp was friends with an orangutan from wildest Africa, she could not have been more surprised. So Max hadn't been their mother's brother at all, but a friend of their father's... but that seemed impossible. The Captain was _friends_ with a man who gave his children candy and toys and encouraged them to cause trouble – and not merely friends, but friends close enough and for long enough that the children called him _uncle_?

As Maria went back outside, blinking as she stepped into the bright sunlight, she realized something _–_ something that she supposed she should have realized sooner: the Captain had not always been the way he was now. She remembered something that he had said to her when she first arrived here. _"...the twelfth in a long line of governesses who have come to look after my children since their mother died."_ That meant he hadn't hired governesses before his wife died. Yes, his wife's death must have been when it happened, when Captain von Trapp had changed so drastically. She had felt almost nothing but angry at him ever since she arrived here, over the way he treated his children. But now, for the first time, Maria felt a flicker of sympathy for him, too. He couldn't have always been like this – so stern, so distant and closed-off – and for the first time, she yearned to know more about the man he used to be. She yearned to heal his hurt.


	12. The Nursery

I know it's been a while since the last update, but this chapter is very interior, and I had some hesitations about posting it. In fact, it's so quiet that it's my entry for the All/No Dialogue Challenge at the Writers Anonymous forum.

* * *

 **Chapter 11**  
 **The Nursery**

Maria had thought that once she got the von Trapp children to like her, once she got them to stop playing pranks on her, being their governess would be smooth sailing. Indeed, for a few days, between finishing the children's playclothes and the arrival of their uncle's letter, her job had been almost blissful, and she'd let herself imagine that the whole summer would be like that – easy, golden days spent singing and playing, larking about Salzburg or exploring the mountains.

But Uncle Max's letter, and the revelation that Max wasn't a blood-relative of the family at all, had awoken a new curiosity in Maria. Certainly, she was grateful that things were still going swimmingly between her and the children, but now, Maria found her thoughts drifting more and more often to their father. The night after Max's letter arrived, Maria stayed up late, pacing her room restlessly, just as she had on the night of the thunderstorm. In her mind, she carefully combed over her memories of what little time that she and Captain von Trapp had spent together before he left for Vienna. He had seemed so stern, so serious, but then a memory flickered...

When she'd jumped up yelping after the children had planted that pinecone on her chair – and even in the darkness of her room, Maria blushed scarlet to think what a fool she must've looked in front of the Captain – just before he had frowned at her, just for a second, hadn't there been a flash of amusement in his dark eyes? Max's letter had been so full of mirth and merriment, and he and the Captain were, allegedly, old friends, though that was still hard to Maria to imagine.

Maria was now burning to know more about the Captain, and more about what kind of family the von Trapps used to be. She had a plan on how to begin, and though she felt conflicted about it, she wanted to put it into action tonight. When she glanced at her clock and saw that it was late enough, she pulled on her dressing-gown and slipped out of her room. She tiptoed down the hall to the children's bedrooms and listened outside each of their doors, to make sure that they were all asleep. The seven von Trapp children had four bedrooms between them – Louisa shared with Brigitta, Marta with Gretl, Friedrich with Kurt, and Liesl had her own – and outside each door, Maria heard only deep, even breathing.

With the coast clear, Maria opened the door to the children's nursery, took a deep breath, and stepped inside. She had never been in their nursery for more than a few minutes until now. It wasn't exactly off-limits to her, not anymore, but she had the impression that despite how much the children had grown to like her, this was a room that they still wanted kept to themselves. It must have been here in their nursery where they'd grown so close, where they'd created their own private little world, where they'd first found refuge in each other after their mother died and their father became their drill-sergeant. Maria knew that they probably wouldn't like her poking about in their nursery, but she told herself that she had to know more about this family if she was going to help them _be_ a real family again. She told herself that God must have sent to the von Trapps for a reason.

For a moment, Maria stood just inside the doorway, taking in the room. There was a fine rocking horse in one corner, and the biggest dollhouse that she had ever seen stood in front of the bay window. The floor was covered with a yellow carpet that looked sunshiney even in the darkness, and toys were strewn all across it – jacks and jump ropes, dolls and teddy bears, balls and hoops, marbles and beanbags, model airplanes and building blocks.

Maria stepped inside further and began walking slowly around the room. She was still nervous about being in the children's nursery without their knowing it, but she didn't hurry. She wanted to get a close, proper look at everything – and besides, the nursery was so untidy that if she did rush, she probably would've tripped over something and made enough noise to wake them all up. The bookshelves were crammed with packs of playing cards, boxes of picture-puzzles, and children's books at every reading level. A checkers board and some crayons and paper sat on the little child-sized table. When Maria peeked inside the toy-chest and the closet, she found still more toys: inside the closet stood two stick-horses and two wooden rifles, complete with little cork bullets, and inside the toy-chest were tin soldiers, paper dolls, a tea set, and several mismatched pieces of dollhouse furniture.

Maria had never seen so many toys in one place outside of a toy shop, and the little girl in her – for there _was_ still a lot of little girl in her, no matter how grown-up she tried to act – was practically singing at the sight of them. How she itched to sit down on the floor and start playing with some of these toys. Those paper dolls looked very much like a set that she'd had as a child – it was almost like seeing old friends again – and that bright red rubber ball was just begging her to bounce it around the room.

Maria almost giggled to herself. Being in this nursery was like being inside a delightful secret. Here, right in the middle of this grand, impeccably neat mansion where everything was in place, was a children's nursery splendidly crammed with color and untidyness. Here, right under the nose of their father, who expected them to always behave with order and decorum, the children had every sort of toy and plaything that a child could want. Maria remembered how serious and imposing the von Trapp villa had looked when she first stood outside its gates; she had never imagined, then, that this cheerful nursery was hidden inside its walls. Her eyes drifted again to those familiar-looking paper dolls, and she couldn't resist picking one up. Getting a proper look at this nursery had made her feel almost giddy.

She must be careful to put anything she touched back in exactly the same spot where she'd found it, so that the children wouldn't suspect anything. But as she picked up the paper doll, she noticed a rip across its blue skirt, sealed over with tape. Shuffling through the rest of the set, she saw more taped-up rips. A suspicion formed in her mind, and she was suddenly on her feet, rifling through the other nursery toys for more evidence. Yes, there it was... Perhaps she hadn't gotten such a proper look at this nursery, after all. Perhaps, like with the children, there was so much more to this nursery than first met the eye.

Now, looking closer, Maria saw that the wooden body of the rocking horse was worn smooth from years of play, and its paint was chipping off in several places. The dollhouse needed a new coat of paint too, and she found two yo-yos that both had knots from where the string had broken and been retied. The model airplane had a smashed wing, and one of the beanbags had torn open and been resewn with crooked, clumsy stitches, obviously from a young, inexperienced hand. Maria's heart ached to imagine one of the children bent over this beanbag with a needle and thread, stabbing their finger with the needle as they sewed up the rip, not wanting to lose even one precious toy. Why would a child from a family as wealthy as the von Trapps go to such trouble to save one beanbag... unless nobody was buying toys for them anymore? Unless nobody had bought them toys in a long time?

Maria could see now why this nursery was so important to the children. It wasn't merely a room, but a souvenir of happier times. Once these toys had all been new and very fine, but now, they were old and worn down from years of play. Once these children had had two loving parents who spoiled them – the proof of that was right here, all around her – but now, the Captain didn't buy toys for his children, not even for the little ones, so everything in this nursery dated from when the older children had been young. Once, this had been a happy, loving family... but when the Captain's wife died, that changed. Now some of these toys were in danger of going to pieces, and so too was this family.


	13. Raindrops on Roses

Pretty plotless fluff here. :) Brigitta's poem is actually Shirley Hughes's poem "Duck Weather."

* * *

 **Chapter 12**  
 **Raindrops on Roses**

Their trip through Salzburg and into the mountains had left the children with an appetite to see more of the world beyond the tall gates of their mansion. The Captain didn't allow them to leave the grounds much, except to go to school, and it struck Maria as sad that despite living so near to the most beautiful city in Austria, they had never really experienced the richness of it – the cathedral spires shining against the sky, the heady scent of flowers in the Hellbrunn, the reflection of the lights over the river.

Maria chose a date and made grand plans to take the children on another trip to Salzburg, to a new part of the city than they'd seen on their first visit last week. But on the appointed morning, when Maria woke up and pulled back her curtains, she was greeted by dark grey clouds that seemed to be racing across the sky, coming closer. Soon, a thunderstorm was upon them, one almost as fierce as the storm of Maria's first night in the mansion. Over breakfast, the children all looked as glum as the weather outside, and even Kurt didn't have much of an appetite. Maria felt like a fool for not having checked the weather reports in the newspaper. She glanced out the window a few times, but the skies were overcast for as far as she could see, and she had to abandon hope of the weather clearing up.

"Well, I know you're all disappointed that we can't go back into Salzburg today," Maria said briskly to the children as they all ate, "but there's no reason to have such long faces. We can still have fun on a rainy day."

They stared at her as if she'd lost her mind. "All right, then," Louisa challenged, scoffing, "what's so fun about a rainy day?"

"Well, I thought all children liked playing in the rain," Maria said, mildly surprised. "Don't you lot?"

A shiver of surprised delight ran around the breakfast table – an exchange of wide eyes and breathy little grins. Maria realized then that the von Trapps _did_ like playing in the rain, just like any children, but they'd done it much before. Their father and governesses had probably always made them spend rainy days stuck indoors. No wonder they had all looked so glum.

The rain kept up all morning, but the children made their own sunshine. After breakfast, they ran outside in their playclothes and had a time jumping into puddles and splashing each other. The rain was still falling steadily, but it wasn't pouring so hard now. It was a soft, gentle summer rain – Maria was sure that God had made purely it for children to play in – and the grounds of the von Trapp mansion were full of deep, tempting puddles, and the grass and leaves glistened with water.

"May we really, Fraulein Maria?" Marta asked, looking up at her uncertainly, as she dipped her foot into a puddle for the first time. "You... you won't mind if our playclothes get all wet and dirty?"

Maria smiled, though it saddened her too, to see a seven-year-old asking permission like this, still unbelieving that she was really allowed to play and get dirty. "Of course, Marta. You remember I told you your playclothes were meant to dirty."

The children split into teams and made a game out of scooping up puddle-water in their hands and flinging at each other. They dared each other to stand under the great torrents of rainwater that gushed out of the gutters from the roof and upper floors, but it was pounding too hard for any of them to try it. They were almost like waterfalls close up, and the children walked around, looked at them all, and named the fiercest one Niagra Falls. Louisa and the boys threw mud on each other, but the other girls shooed them away, not wanting their clothes to get _that_ dirty. "No mud on my overalls!" Gretl shrieked, when Kurt teased her by holding a dark, globby fistful of mud near her face, and she ran away from him to hide behind Liesl's skirt.

When the clouds darkened and the rain grew heavy again, Maria herded them inside the gazebo. They reminded her of a litter of puppies, the way they shook their gangly limbs to get the raindrops off, their skin wet and slick with water and bits of grass. Brigitta wrung out her long, dark hair out between her hands, humming. Liesl settled on a bench inside the wall and titled her head towards the glass, staring up at the sky. Louisa followed her gaze.

"Liesl, what are you staring at?" she asked.

"Oh, it's just romantic, isn't it, watching the rain fall?" Liesl asked dreamily. Maria could practically see stars in her eyes, and it made her smile that Liesl didn't act too hemmed in by her age. Five minutes ago, she was having fun playing in the rain with her younger siblings, and now, she was trying to act like a romantic, mature sixteen year old again.

But her siblings didn't share her enthusiasm for romance. Louisa rolled her eyes, and Friedrich mouthed _vomit_ to Kurt, who stifled a giggle. Brigitta was watching the rain, too, though her expression looked more thoughtful than Liesl's.

"Hey, what happened to that old toy boat we used to have?" Kurt asked. "It's still up in the nursery, isn't it?"

The von Trapp children probably had a very fine toy boat – though it must be old now, like all the toys in their nursery – but when Maria was a girl, her family had been too poor to afford such things. Not that she had missed them. "When I was little," she said off-handedly, "I used to fold toy boats out of paper on rainy days."

"Ooh, I'd like to learn how to do that," Marta said, sitting up straighter from where she and Gretl had plopped down on the floor. "Fraulein Maria, can you teach me?"

Friedrich grabbed the umbrella that Maria had brought with them, and he dashed across the lawn to the pantry, where old newspapers were kept, and returned with a bundle under his arm. The younger children all grabbed a sheet and gathered around Maria. She hadn't folded a boat out of paper in many years, but her hands remembered exactly what to do, as if they had a mind of their own. _Now you fold in this edge. Now you turn it this way._

Marta leaned out of the gazebo door and set her finished boat to float in a deep puddle, but the newspaper was too thin, soaked up too much water, and sank and crumpled. Maria gave her a fresh sheet of newspaper and encouraged her to try it again, but her second boat quickly sank, too. So did Gretl's and Kurt's.

The little ones looked crestfallen, and Maria worried that perhaps suggesting paper boats had been a mistake, but Brigitta found a solution. She picked up a fresh sheet of newspaper and turned it over in her hands, then snapped her fingers. "I know what's wrong!" she exclaimed suddenly. "You've got to color it first!"

"Color it?" Louisa repeated skeptically. "Why would coloring it help?"

"Because crayons are made of wax," Maria said, catching on. "Coloring it would make it waterproof. Brigitta, what a clever idea."

This time, Brigitta grabbed the umbrella and dashed across the lawn to the house. She hurried upstairs to the nursery and returned with a box of crayons. Marta and Gretl colored rainbow stripes over one side of the newspaper, and this time, when they folded it into a boat and set it on the puddle, it floated splendidly. All seven of the children cheered as if they'd just witnessed a miracle. Gretl even jumped up and down a bit, and Maria knew that she spoke for all her siblings when she declared, "I _love_ rainy days!"

* * *

Later that night, Maria was going to bed when she heard a knock at her door. She opened it to find Brigitta, and even though it was past the girl's bedtime, Maria could tell that she hadn't been asleep. The day's rainstorm had finally stopped earlier that evening, around dinnertime, so Brigitta couldn't have been woken up by thunder again.

"Brigitta, what are still doing up?" Maria asked, though she suspected with the notebook that Brigitta was clutching tightly against the front of her nightgown.

"I've just been up thinking about today, about how much fun it was, and I thought..." She bit her lip, hesitating, and Maria smiled nodded for her to continue. She had never seen this self-assured girl look nervous before. "Well, I was just trying to write about it, so – I mean, it's not very good, but I was wondering if... um, maybe you would take a look..."

Brigitta slowly loosened her grip on the notebook and held it out to Maria, who took it reverently, like she used to do with the hymnals in the abbey, for she understood that Brigitta was trusting her with something very important to her. They sat together on Maria's bed while Maria read the lines that Brigitta had written on the open page.

 _Stomping, stamping through the flood, we don't mind a bit of mud_  
 _Running pavements, gutters flowing, all the cars with wipers going_  
 _We don't care about the weather, tramping hand in hand together_  
 _We don't mind a damp wet day, sloshing puddles all the way_  
 _Splishing, splashing in the rain, across the lawn and back again_

When Maria reached the end and looked up from the notebook, Brigitta blurted out, before she had a chance to say anything, "I know it's not very good, but – "

Maria put one hand over hers, stopping her. "I think it's very good, Brigitta," she said softly, smiling. "Really I do. As a matter of fact, I think..." She paused before going on, "...that you must have some practice at writing poetry."

A blush crept into Brigitta's cheeks. "I write it sometimes," she admitted, shrugging. "It's not very good, most of it, but I'm getting better, I think. I have one about that day you took us all up into the mountains, but I'm still working on it."

Maria nodded. She remembered that thoughtful look on Brigitta's face when they were all in the gazebo today; she must have started composing it then. "Poetry is another sort of music. Sometimes it takes a long time to get it just right, but when you do, and you have something good enough to share, it's a wonderful feeling, isn't it?"

Brigitta grinned at her. "Yes, exactly."

As she'd read Brigitta's poem, Maria had heard again the rain falling on the trees, the laughter of the children as they splashed each other and jumped in puddles. And Brigitta was writing a poem about their day in the mountains, too. It warmed her heart to think that even when September came and she had to leave these children, a part of her would still be here with them, on the pages of Brigitta's notebook.


End file.
